Is the University of Pittsburgh
the poster child for the abuse of a community? It is your call to make after reviewing this
website and verifying the information with University of Pittsburgh
personnel. What you see on this particular link barely scratches the
surface of the many indignities experienced by
Oakland’s long-time
residents.

Our grassroots movement has tirelessly attempted to resolve
the numerous problems listed in the Oakland Community Bill of Rights
seen near the beginning of this website. However, too often our community
has been dismissed, ignored or stonewalled by the University administrators.

The
problem of binge drinking in our community is appalling
and getting worse. These are brief stories of only one street, and residents of
various streets throughout the neighborhood can tell similar stories.
Numerous calls to 911 are made for drinking parties, including what
appear to be unauthorized fraternity parties, which awaken residents
in the early morning hours. A resident was nearly
killed or seriously injured when a student at a drinking party threw
a glass gin bottle that narrowly missed her. Six widows live on the street in question,
and these women live in fear of calling 911 because of potential retaliation
by drunken students. One of these women had papers stuffed in her drain
spout, which resulted in significant property damage when the water
backed up into her home and damaged the kitchen ceiling. An 86-year-old
resident had his car keyed and tires slashed, a dog poisoned and kittens
stolen, and feces thrown into his yard. These and other atrocities
were requital for reporting students’ drunken parties. Who would
want their mother, father, grandmother, or grandfather to live with
this kind of indignity?

A woman on another street advises neighbors
to turn off the lights in their houses when calling 911 in order to
avoid student retaliation.

Pitt’s Assistant Vice Chancellor of
Community Relations lacks a staff to manage the
drinking problems in
our community. The deficiency is well exemplified by a response to
drunken students cutting down a tree at 2 o’clock in the morning.
The Assistant Vice Chancellor attended a community meeting in response,
taking with him a volunteer student to address the problem. The long-time
resident who reported the original incident decided not to pursue the
issue, for fear of retaliation by the disruptive
students.

The University
of Pittsburgh has vast and sufficient resources to end the problems
in our community. All of the problems in our community are a result
of the same consciousness that exists at the highest levels of the
University administration, an administration that continues to ALLOW
these problems to exist.

Our grassroots movement began in March 2007 by focusing
mainly on the trash and litter problems in our community. The photos shown below are images of the “home” community
of Pitt and UPMC. What you see is only a small sampling of the hundreds
of photos that have been taken since 2007. None of these photos
was taken on a trash pickup day. The trash and litter problems are daily
problems. The trash that is shown near
houses, in some of the photos, soon gets scattered, and becomes litter on
the sidewalks and streets of our community. This is in addition to
the all too common litter of fast food packaging, loose papers, beer
cans, etc. thrown onto our sidewalks and streets.

These problems have existed since the time when President
and CEO of UPMC, Mr. Jeffrey Romoff, took office in 1992 and every
year it grows worse. The photo at the top of this page was
taken on the residential street where Mr. Romoff had his headquarters
until 2008, when he moved to downtown Pittsburgh.

Chancellor Mark Nordenberg of the University of Pittsburgh
took office in 1996. All of the photos below are within
a ½ square mile area of the university. They are a leisurely 20
minute walk from the chancellor’s office in the Cathedral of Learning
building.

The university and UPMC have too often blamed landlords, community
residents and the city government of Pittsburgh itself for these trash
and litter problems. In October 2008, during a meeting at a city councilman’s
office, a Pitt administrator was asked if the university could assist
with funding to help end the litter problem. His response was: “The
litter problem is not the responsibility of the university”;
he further stated that our community should start a Neighborhood Improvement
District, which would, in part, require elderly long-time residents
to be assessed a fee to end a problem that is caused mainly by university
students.

At another meeting with Pitt faculty members, two questions were put
to them: “How many elderly long-time residents will die before
the problems of trash and litter in our community will end? Does anyone
care?” There was no response.

The same lack of care and concern has been demonstrated
by some of the students themselves. When one Pitt student was asked “Why
do you live under such filthy conditions, his reply was simply: “I’m
lazy and I don’t care.”

In the photos below you will also see evidence of burned
sofas. Some students at Pitt adopted a horrific
tradition started by
students at West Virginia University who began to burn sofas in public
to “celebrate” their football team’s victories over
the Pitt football team. Prior to the 2007 game between WVU and Pitt,
WVU’s chancellor announced that any students involved in such
activity would be expelled from the university. To the best of our
knowledge, no such warning was ever issued by the Pitt chancellor to
Pitt students. It goes without saying that such activities can have
fatal consequences not only for the students themselves, but also for
other members of our community. Sofas were burned throughout South
Oakland when the Pitt football team beat the University of West Virginia
team in the fall of 2007; when the Pitt basketball team won the Big
East Conference in 2008; when the Philadelphia Phillies won the World
Series in 2008; and when Barack Obama won the presidential election
in November of 2008.

When the Pittsburgh Steelers won Super Bowl XLIII on
February 1, 2009, the problems escalated. “Students in
Oakland were prolific with matches” was a quote from an article in the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Fires were started on at least five residential
streets in the area. A car was set on fire and several cars were overturned
on one street. A long-time resident woman courageously
confronted students wanting to burn a couch in the driveway of her home. The students carried
the couch farther down the street and burned it there. For the first
time, a fire was started near the chancellor’s residence in North
Oakland. In addition, fires were set on the main business street fronting
the Cathedral of Learning building with windows broken at four business
establishments, a bus shelter was trashed, damage was done to the school’s
library and a dumpster was burned outside Pitt’s student union
building. The failure of the chancellor and his administration to stop
the burning of couches by students in our neighborhood resulted in
the Pittsburgh City Council having to pass a law banning indoor sofas
from being placed on outdoor porches.

You will also see photos which show that the garbage
in outdoor dumpsters has been burned. For far too many years, on the Friday before final
exams week for the spring semester at the University of Pittsburgh,
some students have actually “taken over” one neighborhood
street, having been denied city permission to hold outdoor parties
on that street. What has resulted has been a series of drunken
parties known as SempleFest. In one year, students blocked Semple Street at
both ends with burned dumpsters, preventing residents from entering
or exiting the street in their cars. Residents were terrified; there
were 68 arrests of participants involving students and non-students.
Among these offenders were 18 verified Pitt students, none
of whom was expelled for participating in this illegal “fest.”

When a university does not take strong action to safeguard
against such threats to the peace and tranquility of the community
which it shares with residents, the results can be more than disconcerting;
they can be downright humiliating, as witnessed in one student’s
comment to a long-time resident who had complained about a particularly
noisy and boisterous party going on by students until the early morning
hours; the student remarked to the long-time resident: “This
neighborhood doesn’t belong to you. This is our neighborhood.”

(Note: To illustrate the continual
problems of litter and trash in the "home" community of the
University of Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center,
the photo at the top of this page was taken on December 24, 2007, and
the three photos above were taken on October 14, 2012.)